Mystery film..

[sheepdog]

Never tell new friends you are developing film yourself, they'll only challenge you with the most mindbending of tasks..

My neighbour from downstairs asked me a couple weeks ago if I could develop an old B&W film for her (one that she had had lying about for a couple of years from school). I said yes, and today I finally got the roll of film in a tightly tied up black plastic bag. She does not know what make or speed it is but suggested I opened it under safelight to find out. The leader is also rolled in (from what I can feel through the bag).

Where do I go from here?

Would my best option be to make a trip to the local photoclub's full darkroom, open the bag under safelight and try to recover the leader with one of those little contraptions made for that purpose? Would the safelight-thing be totally superflous for film so that I rather could buy one of those leader-fishing-thingies and do it myself here?

I'm all ears (and thumbs, but that's a different story for a different occasion)! 🙂

Regards
Kjetil

 

[pesphoto]

hmm...why cant you just open the bag and look at the roll of film if the film is in a film canister? You need total darkness for film or it'll fog.
If it's not in a canister you could develop say a 2 or 3 inch piece of the film so you can then see on the edges what film it is.
Open the bag in TOTAL darkness to see what is in there first off.

 

[Ash]

Have you destroyed the canister yet??

If it's still light tight in its film can, then get a film retriever for a couple $$

Otherwise use the changing bag, pull out the film, and tape and re-spool it into another film can, that you can trust is light-tight. THEN take a section and develop it to find what film it is.

That's the only way I can see you getting away with it.

 

[sheepdog]

After determining that the black bag was actually quite transparent (by holding one of the "ears" which are tied together up between me and the status LED on my monitor, I dared opening it in subdued lighting to get a glimpse of the canister. It's black, unmarked and made of plastic, and probably rolled by her school. I'll proceed to retrieve the leader and process an inch or two as suggested.

Thanks for the helpful replies!

Kjetil

 

[Mark Wood]

Unless it's an orthochromatic film (not sensitive to red light), which is extremely unlikely, a normal red or amber darkroom safelight will immediately completely fog the it. Very dark green (I think) "safelights" did exist for panchromatic film but the'yre so dim and unlikely to be safe with more modern panchromatic B&W film that I wouldn't risk using one.

Assuming it's a 35 mm film, the cassette should be light tight.

 

[pesphoto]

sounds good. Oh, and let us know what you find.
Any bets? Im guessing TriX or Tmax 400

 

[Trius]

I'm guessing one of those films too. And the green filters are made for inspecting pan films after at least 1/2 of the development is already completed; IOW, it is intended for development by inspection. So, you could use a standard developer and time, e.g. D76 1:1, HC-110 Dil. x, etc., for the published time, and at say 60% of that time, take a peek and see the markings on the film margins.

 

[vladhed]

what kind of quality is your neighbour expecting? Just plop it in for 6 minutes - you'll get something printable.

I've twice developed film I had no clue about, once a 120 I found in a folding camera I got at a garage sale and once a friend found an expose bluk rolled film.

In both cases I just guessed 6 minutes in D-76 - the first was Verichrome Pan, came out perfect (though a bit fogged - no fault of mine) the second resulted in a underdeveloped roll of HP5 - roll was shot in bright sunlight so the underdevelopment actually helped the contrasty subject matter. Unfortunately my friend has no idea who these people were - thinks she may have accidentally grabbed someone else roll of film at some point 🙂

 

[sheepdog]

The mystery came to a surprising end..

I went out and bought a standard Hama leader-retreiver (related in what way to the "Golden" variant, I'm not sure), and practised the technique on a worthless blank roll I keep for that purpose. Then I tried it on the actual canister about for about 15 minutes with no result. 😕

I went back and checked the instructions, and tried over, but I just couldn't make this one go "click" at the appropriate time the way my blank one would. It also felt a lot lighter and gave almost no resistance when winding the end knob. After a bit of scratching my head and a lot of 😕, I went downstairs and asked if she was REALLY sure there was film in the canister.. She wasn't.

Two minutes later I was back on the floor of my lightfree room spending only seconds to crack open the canister to find an empty middle spool. We're both still laughing.. 😀



I saw somebody say in the classifieds that HCB didn't need lenses because he could control the paths of photons with his mind - I guess I have just discovered his favourite brand of film.. 😉

Kjetil

 

[markinlondon]

Isn't it always the way? Sometimes there's just no mystery at all. Look on the bright side, at least you didn't fog it and now you have a leader extractor 🙂

 

[pesphoto]

now that's a bit anticlimatic.....mystery solved